A Survey of Meaning Discrimination in Selected English/Spanish Dictionaries

Abstract

Bilingual dictionaries tend to overlook the overwhelming importance of sense discrimination in order for the user to select the correct alternative in the target language (TL). This was pointed out twenty-eight years ago for Spanish and English lexicography in general,' and three years ago for pedagogical purposes.2 The purpose of the present study is to examine the treatment of sense discrimination in eight well-known Spanish/English English/ Spanish bilingual dictionaries and one specialized dictionary which treats meaning discrimination of a number of selected English words which are particularly polysemantic.